


From the SSR Files 2

by Sholio



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Comment Fic, F/M, Gen, Multi, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-24 19:41:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 10,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22123363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: My second Agent Carter promptfic collection, for everything too short or too incomplete to be posted on its own, most of it written for prompts on Tumblr, comment fests, and similar. For my 2016-2019 prompt fic, seeFrom the SSR Files,the original collection.Chapters will be updated in batches every few months. Most will be gen, Peggy/Daniel, or Peggy/Jack/Daniel; other characters and pairings may occasionally appear depending on prompts.Posted and updated Jan. 4, 2020 with Ch. 1-18.
Relationships: Peggy Carter & Daniel Sousa & Jack Thompson, Peggy Carter/Daniel Sousa, Peggy Carter/Daniel Sousa/Jack Thompson
Comments: 56
Kudos: 74





	1. A little quiet downtime between seasons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompted on Tumblr: [Peggy/Jack/Daniel or Peggy & Jack & Daniel, exhaustion or chronic illness/pain, or cuddling.](https://sholiofic.tumblr.com/post/186557904778/prompt-for-agent-carter-peggyjackdaniel-or)
> 
> It came out basically gen, maybe with slight Peggy/Daniel hints.

It was what Jack could only think of as "one of those nights." The sort of night when he caught himself saying things like "well, the burning warehouse was nice and warm after being trapped in the freezer" and "good thing the torrential downpour put out the fire, wasn't it?" He was singed, drenched, half frozen, his knuckles were bruised, and he currently wished he'd sent Carter and Sousa to investigate stolen petunias at a garden show in Jersey instead.

(Were there garden shows in Jersey? Were any of them missing some petunias? He didn't even know. Also, he should probably get some sleep at some point.)

He shook out his bruised knuckles again – he could swear he used to be better at throwing a punch; he was getting out of practice with this whole Chief gig – and wandered around the back of the warehouse to figure out where Carter had gone, preferably before she set something else on fire.

... oh. There she was.

There was a truck with a canvas top, rain currently drumming on it, and Carter and Sousa were sitting inside, wrapped up in blankets, feet to feet (or ... feet to foot, anyway), hands wrapped around cups of hot coffee and generally looking so cute and chummy he could just die. Especially with rain dripping off his hat and running down the back of his collar.

"Glad to see you two are taking the night off," he remarked.

It made it much less satisfying that he had to say it twice over the sound of the rain drumming on the canvas roof of the truck before they noticed him.

"Chief Thompson," Peggy said, and her mildly annoyed tone turned to a sudden smile. "Jack, you look half drowned. Come in here."

"I'm getting back to a nice warm office soon, thanks," he snapped, but he crawled in anyway.

"Here," Sousa said, shoving a blanket in his direction.

Old army surplus -- the rough feeling of the wool brought back memories, most of them not very good. He took off his wet hat and scrubbed the blanket across his face and hair like a towel. Then he wrapped it around his shoulders. The stupid things were like wrapping up in steel wool, but they were warm even when damp.

"Would you like a cup of coffee, Jack?" Peggy asked. "It's terrible. But it's hot."

"What I'd like is a report on this disaster, on my desk at 9 a.m. sharp."

"Disaster?" Peggy said archly. "We apprehended four Russian spies and intercepted a shipment of stolen nuclear material!"

"-- burned down two warehouses, stole a car and a boat --"

"Commandeered, and I believe we rescued you from a freezer."

"A freezer that I was, first of all, locked in because I was looking for you two, and second, I was in the process of escaping on my own --"

"Hey, Jack." Sousa picked up a thermos near his hip, shook it, and poured out some of the contents into the metal cap. "Peggy's right, it's absolutely terrible, but Robinson put a generous dose of whiskey in it. You should put that kid in for a commendation."

Jack took the cap full of hot whiskey-laced coffee, unable to muster further arguments. He sniffed it and took a sip. They were right. It was terrible. But it was also hot, and made him aware that his hands were shaking a little on the cup.

"I look forward to seeing how you two plan to explain this in your report," he tried one last time.

"Me too," Sousa said, and Peggy snorted an unladylike laugh.

Jack knew that he really needed to get out there and run damage control on the warehouse fire, but from the sound of things it was mostly out, and he was really, really tired. He leaned back against the cab of the truck with his hands wrapped around the tin cap of the thermos, and let Sousa and Peggy's friendly banter wash over him. It wasn't that warm in the truck, but he felt a little warmer.


	2. Peggy & Jack, delirium

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At this point I'm getting into the [Whumptober](https://whumptober2019.tumblr.com/post/187785964678/whumptober2019-october-approaches-and-so-does) ficlets from 2019, so there will be a number of those. This one was for the request "delirium." 
> 
> [Whumptober master list of all 2019 fills.](https://sholio.dreamwidth.org/1280243.html) (Also [posted on Tumblr.](https://sholiofic.tumblr.com/post/188749363023/whumptober-2019))

During the war, a nurse once told Peggy that most of her patients died not on the battlefield, not after surgery, but in the dark hours between midnight and dawn. 

Superstition, Peggy might have said, but _liminal,_ is the word that comes to mind now. A word she learned not in the expensive boarding school her parents sent her to, but from the novels she read avidly under the covers. It means between. Between the darkness and the dawn. Between light and dark, life and death.

She thinks of this as she leans over, some hours past midnight, and wipes at Jack's face with a wet towel. His fever has worsened over the last few hours, and as much as she loathed his pale stillness for the last few days, she likes this restless, incoherent wakefulness even less.

She and Daniel have been trading off guard duty on Jack, taking shifts with the handful of SSR agents they still trust. There's no reason why this has to include the duties of a nurse, but she's taken the hard metal chair by his bed, and the nurses are scarce on the floor at 3 a.m. It is only practical.

"Jack," she murmurs, catching his wrist as he thrashes in the throes of a dream she can't guess at. His wrist bones are sharp beneath the skin. "Jack," she says again, and he stills, as if her voice is a tether, and it catches at him and brings him down from ... wherever he is.

She isn't aware of falling asleep, only waking up, cold to the bone and shocked, for a moment, at her own failure to hold to the terms of her own code. _You fell asleep on guard duty, soldier ..._

And then, slowly, she becomes aware of a hand clasped over her wrist, with a desperate strength in those fingers reduced to little more than bones. And he is looking at her, his eyes fever-bright and yet focused.

"Jack," she gasps out, waking, and shifts the gun from her lap to the floor beside her chair. She leans over, shifting his grip so she can take his hand. "Jack?"

He wakes a little more, looking at her with a kind of vulnerable surprise, as if he's startled to find her here, or perhaps just surprised to find her in his dream. "Peggy," he says faintly.

"Hello," she says, and then, because she can't help herself, "Jack, I don't suppose you got a good look at the person who shot you --"

But he's already slipping away, she can see it -- eyes glazing, that quick sharp smile going blurred around the edges. 

She shifts her hand to curl her fingers around his. "Jack --" 

... but he's fallen away from her again. So she just holds his hand, her bones pressed to his, and answers his incoherent queries with whatever answers she has to give, until morning comes.


	3. Daniel giving Jack stitches

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whumptober 2019, "stitches."

"Hold still," Daniel said.

 _"You_ hold still," Jack snapped, which didn't make any sense at all but made _him_ feel slightly better.

Peggy dropped suddenly out of a tunnel above their heads, gracefully crouching and standing up. "Well," she said firmly, brushing off her hands, "no way out there, either. How is he?"

"Fine," Jack said flatly.

"Still bleeding," Daniel said. "I'm doing my best here. Do you, er, have any ... experience, with stitching of this sort. I'm asking because I'm terrible at it."

"Just apply pressure," Peggy said, and went off to investigate another hallway to see if that one had also been blocked by Leviathan shenaniganry.

"That'd be a no, then," Jack said. "Which brings our contingent of competent nurses to approximately zero. Are you done stabbing me with that thing?"

"You know what?" Daniel said, and shoved a wadded-up towel against his side. "I've decided I'm perfectly fine with you bleeding to death. Hold this."


	4. Drugged and hallucinating Jack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whumptober 2019, "[hallucinations](https://sholiofic.tumblr.com/post/188528035548/day-22-hallucination)".

"Oh hey, relief shift already?" Daniel said when Peggy opened the door, in a tone that suggested it couldn't come a moment too soon.

"Indeed. There's coffee and lunch in the canteen." She patted his arm and looked cautiously at Jack, who was lying on a sofa that had been hastily dragged into the interrogation room to serve as a sort of quarantine space that was more secure than the break room but less uncomfortable than a holding cell. "Is he asleep?"

"Uh ... not sure," Daniel said. "He's been quiet, so I haven't been willing to mess with a good thing." He laid aside the newspaper he'd been reading and levered himself to his feet. "Lab boys have any luck figuring out what he was dosed with?"

"Not so far. I hear Howard is inbound from the Caribbean to help."

"And that's going to improve the situation, is it?" Daniel said. 

After being up all night, she was too tired to offer more than a perfunctory smile at his weak attempt at a joke. She displayed a syringe for Daniel's inspection. "Also, I'm to collect some blood samples for the lab, as Dr. Samberly refuses to come into the room." This had become the case after Jack tried to stab Samberly with a spoon (leading Daniel to quip, "You sure he's actually hallucinating?").

"Need any help?" Daniel asked. "I can stick around to run it down to the lab boys."

"No, I'm sure I'll be fine. Someone will be up to fetch it shortly."

Daniel kissed her cheek. "Have fun, then. I'll be back in a couple hours to spell you."

"Oh, it will be delightful," she said, watching him leave. She gave the one-way mirror on the wall a jaunty lift of her hand and sat down on the couch beside Jack.

He did appear to be asleep, and sleeping it off would probably be for the best. He'd been alternating between manic episodes and simple disorientation. They'd been trying to keep someone with him to keep from hurting himself or others, and this had narrowed down to primarily Peggy or Daniel after the Samberly incident.

But sticking him with a needle without warning was probably the best way to court a black eye, so instead she shook his shoulder gently. "Jack?"

He came awake suddenly, lashing out at her. She caught his hand. "It's only me. Peggy. Do you know me?"

Jack squinted at her. "Aunt Barbara?"

"You'd best not be joking."

His dazed look faded into a slightly loopy grin. "I know who you are," he said. Nodding to the syringe, he added, "And I know what that's for."

"Well, that makes it easier. Roll up your sleeve."

He did it without raising his head off the arm of the couch, wincing. "Head hurts. Did I give Samberly a black eye?"

"He's quite afraid of you at the moment, which is something of a feat since you've already pointed a gun at the man and threatened to kill him, and it didn't seem to make much of a difference." As she spoke, she swabbed his arm with alcohol and tried to look like she knew what she was doing. She'd learned the basic aspects of the nurse's trade during the war, but she still didn't enjoy it.

"Ow! How big is that needle, Marge?"

"You must be feeling better if you're up to complaining."

He grunted in response, and gazed blankly at his arm as his blood swirled into the glass vial. She could see his face relaxing into something between sleep and hypnosis, and nudged him with her elbow. "Jack. Wake up."

Jack jerked and looked up; she saw some kind of expression flash across his face, and he said in a carefully controlled voice, "Marge, you'd tell me if the walls were bleeding in here, right?"

"I would, indeed," Peggy said. "They are not."

He stared at her for a moment longer, then gave a brief nod, in a "that settles it" kind of way. Peggy finished drawing the blood and put aside the sample-collection the case Samberly had given her to be collected later.

"You gonna stay, Peggy?" Jack asked quietly, looking not at her but at something past her shoulder.

"I will," she said, laying a hand on his arm. "I'll tell you what's real and what's not."

"Okay," he murmured, and closed his eyes, as if that was all he needed, a single pushpin planted in reality to hold the rest together.


	5. Jack and abandonment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whumptober 2019, "abandoned."

"What did you think, that we'd abandon you, boy? Whatever weaknesses you came back with."

Jack grimaces something that might be a smile, and takes the sheet of paper from his father. SSR. It's ... something. Better than spending all day every day with nothing but his own thoughts.

"It's a stepping stone, isn't it?" his father says, and claps him on the shoulder. "My war hero son. Listen, boy. I'll talk to Vernon. If you can tough it out for a couple of years in the trenches, we'll get you out of all that. Just put in enough time to look good, you know what I mean? Family has your back, boy. We'll get you all the way to the top."

*

"-- _abandon_ us in the middle of an operation, _Jack_ \--"

Peggy is really, truly furious, and Jack steps back, not really wanting to be in the path of it, except unfortunately he _is_ in the path of it, right square in the eye of Hurricane Peggy.

"Marge, c'mon --" He backs off when her eye glints in a way that says she really might hit him. "Agent Carter,” he corrects himself. “We had your backup ready to deploy. We were working out some bureaucratic hurdles --"

She makes a noise like "haaahhh!" and flings up her hands and strides off. Well, at least it's not a fist in the jaw. And ... Jack stares after her, feeling himself collapse a little bit in the middle because she's fine, she got out of it on her own ... she really _is_ okay, however inadequately he'd managed to dispatch backup to her.

Because she's Peggy.

And because running an office is harder than he thought.

And because, because ...

... because _mistakes happen,_ they both know that. It's not about the operation, not really. He's got just enough self-awareness to realize that, but not enough to do anything about it. This all goes back six months, to him snaking a promotion out from under her. ( _All the way to the top._ ) Or maybe it goes back two months, to Daniel leaving for the West Coast, another job she wasn't offered.

Nobody's got Peggy's back, and he knows he's just as guilty as the rest of them.

*

"-- didn't mean to leave you, Jack, I'm so sorry ..."

Her voice is a lifeline that he follows out of the drugged haze, and mostly just because she keeps apologizing. It's _wrong,_ if anyone needs to apologize it's him, and ... and he doesn't want to make her sound like that, it's not right.

"You didn't," he whispers, and when his blurry vision finally coheres, it's on her face, staring at him in surprise and warm delight.

It's not her, not her. It's Vernon and his ilk; it's his father; it's _him,_ who had given her every reason to believe she could trust him and then turned his back on her.

The one person here who has nothing to apologize for is Peggy.

But that's too many words to get out, especially in his current state. "Sorry," he whispers, all he can manage, and her face changes somehow; her hand presses on his.

"Jack, stop it," she says, and he would laugh if he had enough breath.

"You know it's true."

"Very well, I concede you've plenty of things to apologize for, but we can deal with that when you're well," she says, and presses her hand on his. And he closes his eyes, because ... because she's Peggy, and she won't leave. Anyone else he's ever known might leave him, but not Peggy. Peggy doesn't abandon people, and lying in that hospital bed, he wants with all he has to be worthy of that faith, and to repay her trust. He doesn’t know much about being there for people, but he might finally have a teacher he can learn from.


	6. Jack recovering from being shot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whumptober 2019, "recovery."

Getting better happens, Jack guesses, in the same way as that old saw about a watched pot not boiling. It drags on forever and then happens when you aren't looking.

Trouble is, he has a hard time not looking.

"Jack," Peggy says, exasperated, "catch the ball, would you?"

Docs gave him some exercises that he's supposed to do at home, things that are supposed to help. It's a program built during the war, he guesses, built off people like Sousa, and that brings an unfamiliar twisting guilt. He looks ahead, lets the damn ball go over his shoulder and bounce off Stark's flowerpots.

"You are impossible," Peggy says, getting up to fetch the ball.

"You don't have to be out here." It bothers him a lot when she does things like this; it's a violation in the way things are between them, a debt he can't repay.

"Oh, be quiet," she says, and throws the ball at his face this time, so he has to catch it or take across the forehead.

*

It's odd how Daniel is the easier one of them to be around right now. Daniel still acts exactly like he always has, like Jack is a persistent thorn in his side that he only reluctantly tolerates. It's vastly better than trying to handle Peggy's strangely mercurial way of behaving toward him: sometimes so soft that it alarms him, sometimes bordering on angry.

Daniel is just Daniel, and Jack appreciates his steadiness, especially right now. Daniel doesn't like him (much), and that's something he can depend on. He likes things he can depend on.

But every once in a while Daniel will throw him off balance. Like now: just sitting out with him on the deck by the pool and reading the paper, for no apparent reason.

"You really have to be here?"

"It's nice out here," Daniel says, reaching for his cup of coffee. "Besides, gunmen could come over that wall at any moment."

Jack turns a disgusted look on the wall in question, the patio wall behind the pool, draped in ornamental shrubbery. "Oh come on, a guy gets shot once, you never let him live it down ..."

It's not until later, a lot later, looking back on it, that he realizes Daniel was serious. Okay, serious in Daniel's particular sarcastic, deadpan way, but ... he really _has_ had either Peggy or Daniel at his heel almost constantly, even here at Stark's, where there's a high-tech security system and a full-time guard.

"I don't need babysitting," he snaps at Peggy. They've graduated from catching a ball to light sparring on the patio. There was a time in his life when he couldn't have imagined participating in hand-to-hand combat with a woman. He's been put on the floor enough by Peggy by now to pay attention to where her hands are at all times.

"Oh, is that what you're doing?" she asks. "Right fist _up,_ man, that's terrible form. My SOE combat instructor would have put you on your face for that, with a kick in the bollocks for good measure."

It's always a little startling to hear vulgarity out of Peggy. "Is that why you're good at this?" he can't resist asking. "Nothing to kick?"

This _does_ get him planted facefirst on the patio tile, and he can't even say he doesn't have it coming. "Ow," he groans out when he has enough breath back.

He looks up and sees Peggy grinning down at him, with a hand extended and just a hint of concern on her face. "Are you all right?"

He doesn't dignify that with a response, just grabs her hand with his good one, and lets her pull him up.

*

Healing is a slog, not a sprint. It's a long slow journey with no particular destination along the way. But at least he's not doing it alone.


	7. OT3 and their kids in the '70s

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr request for [daniel/peggy/jack established relationship and how they are with their kids growing up - maybe in the same verse as the ‘steve is found in the 70s’ ficlet.](https://sholiofic.tumblr.com/post/189418895008/i-dont-kno-if-ur-still-into-agent-carter-at-all)
> 
> Same universe as [this ficlet.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5742253/chapters/30255495) This is a few days later.

"I thought you weren't going to be home for my graduation, Dad," Debbie Sousa declared, flinging her arms around Jack's neck hard enough to make him stagger backwards.

"Plans change, kiddo." Jack caught her up in a hug, whirling her in her graduation gown. "Got in late last night. Hey, watch it, you're going to break an old man's back."

"Old?" she laughed. "You're not old!"

Peggy didn't think so either, but Debbie certainly made _her_ feel old -- both of the kids, honestly. She watched the byplay with her arm around Carol, whose profusion of blond curls made it clear which of the men in Peggy's life was her biological father -- for all that it mattered; Carol had hewed to Daniel's quiet calm from an early age, while fierce, driven Debbie, who had just become one of the only women in her graduating law class, was just as evidently Jack's daughter despite her clear resemblance to Daniel.

And not a single person in Peggy's life would have really understood (the closest anyone ever got were the persistent rumors that she'd had an on-again, off-again affair with Jack for the last twenty years) but at times like this, it didn't really matter, on green grass under a clear blue sky. Ironically, the thronging crowd at Yale's commencement ceremonies provided almost as much privacy as total isolation. All around them, graduates and their parents or siblings were having their own little reunions, hugging or wandering about their arms around each other. The reporters had gotten tired of Peggy (and tired of Debbie, one of the only girls in her graduating law class) early on, and now the five of them enjoyed a rare kind of anonymity, just one little family group among many. In this kind of setting, no one was going to ask which of the men was Debbie's father and which was her uncle. They could stroll off, as they did, with their arms around each other -- Peggy with Daniel's hip bumping hers, and her other arm around Debbie, and Debbie with her arm laced through Carol's -- and the only thing anyone would think, looking at them, was _There's a family._

And Debbie had never asked why Jack was home from Berlin days before he should have been.

*

Peggy had picked him up at the New York airport late the previous night. Jack was jet-lagged and grouchy, and she was already dreading the night drive up to New Haven for the ceremony. Daniel and Carol had driven up earlier. Peggy hadn't yet seen them, because she herself had only just gotten back from Norway less than twelve hours before. She was dazed and tired and still trying to convince her brain of the difference between midnight and dawn, and she kissed Jack without really thinking about it, then pulled back when she realized what she'd done. But no one at the gate was paying attention, she understood an instant later; no one thought her anything other than a middle-aged woman with gray streaks in her dark hair kissing a tall blond man, dapper despite the creases in his suit and his obvious jet-lag, who must be her returning husband or European paramour.

"Where is he?" Jack asked, as if she might have Captain America in the trunk of her sensible Chrysler.

"They flew him directly to SHIELD headquarters in DC. They have the facilities to deal with him there."

She realized after she said it that she was speaking of Captain -- of _Steve_ as if he was some kind of superpowered threat to be dealt with.

But ... in some sense he _was,_ wasn't he? She didn't know how to think of him, and most particularly she didn't know how to cope with the feelings that had been stirred up after nearly thirty years of laying dormant.

"He wake up yet?" Jack asked her, as they walked to her car in the parking garage adjoining the terminal.

"No," Peggy said. "He may not, you know. The serum appears to have preserved his body, but --" It came out steady. "Perhaps not his mind."

She had seen him in Tromsø, before he was hustled onto a plane for the US. The sight of that face had taken her back a quarter century, kicked her right back into the head of a completely different woman, one who had seen a very different future for herself.

The future she had imagined as a young woman would have completely erased Debbie and Carol. It would have washed away the life she'd shared with Daniel and Jack. And now here was the ghost of that life, dangled in front of her, while her real life went on: Debbie's graduation and Carol's angry diatribes about Vietnam and the mortgage on the new house in New York and the work on the permits for the New York SHIELD construction project and the vet bills for their aging Jack Russell terrier (currently boarding with the Jarvises while the family went up to Connecticut for Debbie's commencement) and midnight airport pickups and last-minute paperwork and ...

It was a life she had here, filled with her friends and her lovers and her children and the job she'd devoted her life to. She didn't even know how to fit Steve back into it.

"So who's driving?" Jack said, dragging her back to reality.

"Me. Obviously."

"I think you've had less sleep in the last twenty-four hours than I have."

"Me," she said, and he didn't argue.

*

Debbie and Carol were chattering about where to go for drinks after the traffic cleared out a little, the sisters' political differences washed away in their simple pleasure at seeing each other after several years of infrequent get-togethers at family holidays. Peggy rested against Daniel's hip and enjoyed the feeling of Jack's arm sliding around her from the other side, and the way their hands clasped briefly behind her back, letting go only with a light stroke across the wrists that she was aware of only because it happened across her hip.

If circumspection was a lifestyle for her and Jack, then Jack and Daniel had raised it to an art form. Thus far, even at the SSR, no one had guessed the second component of the secret the three of them shared.

The life that she loved was a house of cards, resting on a foundation of secrets. Any number of things could bring it crashing down. But never, in all her thoughts along those lines, had the thought occurred to her that Steve might be the agent of that destruction.

It didn't have to happen, she told herself. But ... she really didn't know what was going to happen when he woke up. She didn't _know._

"Someone's moody today," Jack said, resting his head against hers. 

Here, today, where familial gestures of affection were not uncommon; where she could stroll with two men while the girls giggled mere feet away, and she could feel Jack and Daniel's hands linked behind the small of her back.

"Just today?" Daniel said, like a tennis player batting back a serve, and she aimed a nudge at his ribs, but not hard enough to actually knock him off stride

Well. Okay then, if that's the way they wanted it. This was an oasis, with the real world still out there. The world, and Steve; the past she'd left behind; the politically uncertain present in which she lived.

But they'd lived their lives leapfrogging from oasis to oasis. And she had learned to take those warm feelings as they came, and not to worry too much about the future, a future that could break them apart.

She dragged in a breath. They had found Steve. They _found_ him.

"But the real question is, who drives us to the restaurant," she said, and Jack laughed and Daniel kissed her temple, and things were good. Oh. So good.


	8. Peggy and Jack accidentally locked in a SHIELD cell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt on Tumblr: _The SSR/early SHIELD runs a training exercise with supermax prison cells, but then something else happens and the power goes out! Rose and Daniel on the outside, Jack and Peggy on the inside._ [Originally posted here.](https://sholiofic.tumblr.com/post/189447618133/this-was-from-my-hc-bingo-prompt-call-early-this)

"Any ideas?" Jack asked, looking up from the door of the cell after his attempts to use his penknife as a lock pick failed. He was grinning, and Peggy couldn't resist returning it. This kind of thing -- testing Howard's new high-tech prison cells -- was _fun._ It was a nice break from their regular daily routine. Hard to believe that a few years ago, she would've been horrified at the idea of being trapped in an extremely small prison cell with Jack Thompson.

"The lock is electric," Peggy said. "Perhaps we could short-circuit it with water from the toilet?"

"Nice try, but no," Howard's voice said over the intercom. "The lock is shielded. Water, bodily fluids, none of that will have an effect."

Peggy put her hands on her hips and looked up at the ceiling. "You thought of everything, didn't you? Daniel, are you there?"

"I'm here," Daniel said, with a soft laugh. "We can see everything you're doing in there, you know."

Jack held up a single finger to the cage-shielded camera in the corner. "Do you see this?"

"Loud and clear," Howard said cheerfully. "Great resolution on these cameras. They'll be out on the civilian market next year."

"How excellent for your bottom line," Peggy said, and that was the point when the cell plunged into darkness.

She stood still, shocked. Was this part of the test? The darkness was so utterly complete that it seemed to press on her eyes. "Howard?" she said. There was no answer.

"Did they do this on purpose?" Jack's voice came out of the darkness near her. "Hey, Sousa, if this is retaliation for offending your delicate eyeballs --"

"I don't think they did this." Peggy's voice sounded loud to her own ears. It was shockingly quiet. She could hear Jack breathing next to her, and it took her a moment to realize that the uncanny silence was not just because of the darkness, but because all the many ambient sounds of Howard's high-tech building had ceased. Most critically, from her point of view, the thrum of the ventilation equipment.

"Okay, this is fine," Jack said, his voice a little too loud. "This is peachy." 

There was the small crack of a striking match, and a light flared in the darkness. Jack held it up, shedding its small light on the cell around them. It was bare-bones and simple, designed for temporary confinement of high-danger prisoners. There was a bed and a toilet, both bolted down, and that was it.

"It's possible the power failure might have released the lock," Peggy said. She gave the door a firm tug. Nothing happened. "Very well, perhaps not."

"So they'll be down to let us out soon, right?" Jack said. The match burned down to his fingers; he cursed and shook it out, plunging them back into darkness. "I mean, leaving us trapped in the dark wasn't really part of the plan."

"They might not be able to. All the locks in the building are electronic. If they don't release automatically, they might be impossible to open at all."

"Oh, well, that's great. Just great." There was a thump that she interpreted as Jack's fist striking the wall. "I _knew_ it'd be a mistake to get Howard Stark involved with this. Knew it! And yet, here we are. They can't hear us, can they?"

"I don't think so," Peggy said. Regrettably so. She had a few things she wanted to say to Howard herself.


	9. Jack & Daniel scene in Black Water Rising

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is for a Tumblr request for any alternate-POV scene for [Black Water Rising](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3588402) (the Agent Carter fic that started it all!).
> 
> Since the entire fic is in Peggy's POV, we never got to see the Jack or Daniel scenes when they're not with her. So this is their side of the scene after Peggy leaves them alone, before Jack swims to the hangar, when he tells Daniel the Okinawa story.
> 
> [Originally posted here.](https://sholiofic.tumblr.com/post/189476601593/id-really-love-any-alternate-pov-snippets-for)

"So, Daniel," Jack said, floating just below him. "I'm basically a shit."

"Gee, really?" Daniel glanced up; Peggy was walking away briskly, the bobbing light of her flashlight reflecting across the wet floor until it vanished into the nearest hallway. "I hadn't noticed."

"Ha ha. You're a riot."

Daniel tried to rearrange himself on the floor so he could see through the bars more easily. He couldn't crouch; he had to sit flat on the floor, while water drained around him into Jack's crypt. A ticking clock, counting down. 

It occurred to him that just now might be the first time Jack had ever called him by his first name.

"You know, whatever you want to say to me, I dunno if it's worth the time you're wasting here," Daniel said. "Peggy's idea is only going to work if you get moving."

"I know," Jack said through chattering teeth. Floating on his back in the water, he looked like a drowned man already, ghost-pale in the beam of Daniel's flashlight. "But there's something I need to tell you. In case ... you know."

Daniel didn't bother with reassurances or platitudes. They'd both seen combat; they'd both been the recipient of deathbed confessions before. He'd never noticed Jack being especially reticent in front of Peggy, but clearly whatever he had to say was something he didn't want her to know about. Daniel had a feeling he probably didn't want to hear it either -- _He got some girl in the family way and he has a kid in England? He's not really Jack Thompson, just a guy in the service who took the real Thompson's credentials --_ Okay, the cold was making him loopy now.

But whatever it was that was weighing on Jack's mind, there was really only one thing a guy could do when confronted with that sort of confession. And Daniel's discomfort -- flat on his ass in ice-cold water, muscles cramping with cold, hands chewed to bruised dog meat from the digging he'd been doing -- paled in comparison to his need to bear witness in what might be Jack's final minutes of life.

"I'm listening," he said, when Jack went silent. "Go on."

Jack sucked in a breath. "So, the Navy Cross. The war hero thing. All of that. You know?"

"There's no way I could not know, Jack," Daniel said, and he couldn't stop a short laugh. "You talk about it all the time." Though, come to think of it, it hadn't come up since Dooley died and Jack got the promotion. Maybe all that talk had been less ego than bluster, trying to cement a place for himself among the men in the bullpen. Not that it made it any less annoying --

"It's a lie," Jack said. "It never happened."

The words fell into a sudden silence, broken only by the thousand subtle variations on water splashing, dripping, falling around them, filling up the world, flooding Jack's grave.

"How so?" Daniel said. There was no time to -- react, really; he had to get whatever Jack needed to say out of him, before all their time was gone. "You made it up, never got the award, or what?" He'd met people like that, of course. There were always people who lied about things like that. Flatfeet who served out the war in a Jersey shipyard and then made up a big story about how they ran across two miles of enemy fire, took out a Jerry machine gun and saved their whole squad.

But usually they were pretty easy to spot. Jack was a braggart, but he'd never struck Daniel as that particular type of fraud. And Daniel had _seen_ the Navy Cross; Jack used to show it around.

"The award is real," Jack said. "They pinned it on me and all. It's just that I didn't do what they think I did." He took another deep breath and kicked himself around in the water, maybe trying to see Daniel more clearly, but there was no way he _could_ see him, not from down there. "It was for ... conspicuous heroism in battle. Saved the lives of every man on my team. Except I didn't. What I did was ..."

He paused again. They didn't have _time._ But Daniel didn't have the heart to do more except carefully prod him along. "What'd you do, Jack?"

"It was on Tsuken Island," Jack said. He was looking at nothing, staring into the dark. Maybe seeing it all over again, the way people did. "In Okinawa. At night. Six enemy soldiers, walking into my camp. I was on night watch, fell asleep, woke up just in time to shoot 'em before they got us. Just one problem. White flag. They were surrendering. I just didn't know it 'til it was too late." He let out a sharp sort of laugh, cracking in the middle from cold, and maybe something else. "Buried the flag. Took the medal. Took the honors. You got anything to say to that, Sousa?"

"I don't know," Daniel said carefully. His mind was blank, his view of Jack tilting, reassessing. "It was ... chaos over there. Things happen."

"That's all you got to say about it? I brought that up in your face all the time. So now you know. The big war hero's a coward. Nothing to say to that? C'mon." Jack's voice had that sharp fighting edge. "You're the expert, right? There's one war hero in here, and it ain't me." His voice cracked. "You're the real deal."

 _That_ was what got the anger started, a slow building burn. "For God's sake, Jack, you think getting shot makes me a hero? You were there same as I was. You know what it's like."

The laugh that came out was a shade softer, a little more genuine. Jack swam closer, holding on the bars with a white-knuckled grip. The air space below the grate was nearly gone. "Carter knows," he said quietly, and there was another sideways tilt to the solid floor under Daniel, another surprise. "Didn't mean for her to, but, you know. Carter."

That startled a laugh out of him, too. "Yeah," Daniel said. He didn't know how he felt about this. Didn't know what it meant. "You tell anyone else?" he asked, but he already knew the answer.

"Just you and Carter."

All Daniel said to that, all he really could say, was, "You gotta get going, Jack."

"I know," Jack said through clenched teeth. He turned, kicking himself around in the water. Daniel moved his flashlight beam without really thinking about it to illuminate the water around Jack, picking out the place where the ceiling dipped to meet the water. Maybe there was an inch or two to spare yet. It looked impossible for any man to fit through there.

Jack hung there in the water, visibly bracing himself. Daniel couldn't help wondering how much of his deathbed confession was just stalling. Swimming through those flooded hallways in the dark -- he couldn't even imagine it.

There were a thousand kinds of courage and a thousand kinds of cowardice, and one thing about war was that it made you look into the face of all of them. 

"Hey," Daniel said. Before he could come to his senses, he passed the flashlight down through the bars, butt first, the beam skipping off the ceiling. "Take this. I don't know if it'll work for long underwater, but it's gotta be better than nothing."

Jack took the other end of the flashlight automatically, and looked up at him, his face an odd mix of guarded and open. He made a sort of tokenistic shove, trying to push the flashlight back up toward Daniel. "You're wasting it on me."

"Jack, damn it, you know we don't have time to argue about it." Daniel passed the radio down after it. "Take this too. You get trapped somewhere, call us and see if we can guide you."

"It's not going to work," Jack said, looking up at him, three fingers curled around the flashlight and one resting on the radio. "None of this. You know that, right?"

"Not if you don't get moving right now, it won't."

Jack started to say something, shook his head, and jammed the radio into a pocket, under the surface of the water. "Here goes nothing," he murmured, took a deep breath, and dived.

The flashlight's beam was instantly watery and splintered, illuminating, for a moment, the concrete floor under eight or nine feet of water. Jack's legs and feet flashed, and then he was gone under the overhanging ceiling below, and Daniel was sitting alone in darkness growing ever more dense and oppressive as the light faded.

He sat there until the inevitable plunge into absolute darkness -- though whether it was because the waterlogged flashlight had stopped working, or because Jack had turned a corner, he had no way of knowing. Then he felt around for his crutch, braced it on the floor, and levered himself to his feet.

The darkness was very, very ... dark. He had a mental vision of turning the wrong way, putting his leg through the bars of the grate in the floor, and plunging up to his crotch between the bars. Losing the artificial leg, losing the crutch, breaking the other leg ... 

_Knock it off, Sousa. We've got more than enough trouble without borrowing some._

He felt his way carefully, feeling out with his good foot and sliding the other forward, but he didn't start breathing easier until he felt a wall in front of his groping left hand and knew he was well away from the grate.

He very deliberately didn't think about Jack, except to send a silent hope or maybe a prayer that way. _Get out of this, you lying son of a bitch. We'll talk about the rest of it later. Just get out of it so I can chew you out as you so richly deserve._

_Just get out of it._


	10. Jack & Daniel, "confirmed bachelors"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr request: _Ok ever since you posted the thing with the ot3 at Peggy's parents' house I keep thinking about what would happen if Daniel and Jack actually had to go undercover as "confirmed bachelors" for some reason (pairings or not, author's choice)_
> 
> I actually struggled with this one somewhat - not the pairing, but the scenario. That's why it's so short. I would still enjoy writing more of this someday. [Originally posted here.](https://sholiofic.tumblr.com/post/189539667913/ok-ever-since-you-posted-the-thing-with-the-ot3-at)

"This is complete madness," Jack muttered, crashing on the sofa and throwing his arm over his face.

It was a dangerous game they were playing. Dangerous indeed. To be taken as anything other than their cover risked letting their quarry escape. To be taken _too_ seriously, though ... they had some shelter, provided by their status at SHIELD -- as federal agents, they would have been be at risk of losing their jobs, even imprisonment -- but ...

There was a lot to lose.

Daniel sat carefully on the edge of the couch and stretched out his leg. "Look on the bright side."

"I didn't realize there was a bright side," Jack said, still with his arm over his face, "to pretending to be what you and I actually are, except we can't admit in public that it's not fake."

"Hey, but we get to dance somewhere that's not our living room. Kiss, even, with perfect plausible deniability. You ever think we'd get to do that?"

"Well," Jack muttered, allowing his arm to be pried from off his face, "okay, maybe ... no," and he sighed, and leaned into Daniel's kiss.


	11. Peggy investigating Jack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr request: _Jack is a corrupt politician and Peggy is a government agent who investigates the charges against him, Daniel is Jack's assistant who cannot seem to stay out of Peggy's investigation and wants to help. Again, platonic relationships please <3_
> 
> I really, really want to write the long version of this, but here's a snippet. [Also posted on Tumblr.](https://sholiofic.tumblr.com/post/189520927613/agent-carter-prompt-if-im-allowed-a-second)

Peggy had played the empty-headed secretary role before; it wasn't her favorite by far, but she _was_ good at it ... at least as long as she didn't have to do too much of the actual secretarial work, which she definitely was _not_ good at. But, well, part of the role's "charm" was that not being a particularly good secretary was built into it.

What she hadn't really counted on was nearly constant, well-intentioned help from Sen. Thompson's primary aide.

It wasn't that he was pushy about it, or inappropriate; it would have been easier to ignore him if he was. No, he was just _helpful._ Constantly. If she dithered with the coffee things just outside Thompson's office while trying to listen in on a phone call, "please call me Daniel" Sousa came over to ask if he could show her how Thompson liked the coffee made. If she faked dropping documents to get a look at them, Daniel picked them up for her. He was _everywhere,_ and it seemed that she could hardly drop a plausibly deniable thumbtack without Daniel noticing from across the room.

She was well aware that he was doing it simply because he was good at his job. People like the person Peggy was pretending to be -- brand new interns, fresh from out of town -- tended to mess up paperwork in ways that Daniel had to fix. And it wasn't just her; she noticed Daniel's tendency to take the other office staff under his wing as well, gently redirecting them or helping them fix mistakes when they slipped up.

Unfortunately, Daniel being good at _his_ job was making it very hard to do _her_ job. In retrospect she wished she'd decided to embrace a different cover, one who was efficient and good at her work and capable of being left alone for more than five minutes.

She found herself brainstorming ways to get Daniel out of the way for a day or two. Perhaps an out-of-town meeting? No, that might remove Thompson from the office as well, thus defeating the purpose of chasing off Daniel. A press conference that required personal attention? A manufactured family emergency? 

Poisoning his coffee was probably going too far.


	12. Reunited several years after canon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr prompt: _Peggy, Daniel and Jack have been going their separate ways after Shield was founded but they reunite again (maybe like ten years later) because of a mission, turns out they have some catching up to do._ [Originally posted here.](https://sholiofic.tumblr.com/post/189495381818/agent-carter-prompt-peggy-daniel-and-jack-have)

She almost didn't recognize him in the first glimpse. The crutch would have given it away, but she didn't see it at first; what she saw was a dapper dark-haired gentleman talking to the West German ambassador, his face partly turned away from her. There was something shockingly familiar about that profile, and Peggy glided discreetly closer, aware of the comforting weight of the gun strapped to her thigh beneath her dress. "Familiar" could mean almost anything; it could be someone she'd seen in the papers, it could be someone from a dossier of Russian assassins --

But then he turned his head and smiled and, at the same time, shifted his weight and she saw the crutch and it all fell together and she had to stop for a moment. Daniel Sousa. _Here,_ at an embassy function in London.

And then he looked over and saw her, and his face lit up with delight.

An instant later, the expression became guarded, and he took a quick look around the room before looking back at her, eyebrows going up in an unspoken question. _Are you here as YOU? Can I admit that I know you?_

It amazed her that she recognized every nuance of that, even after all these years.

She gave him a short nod and slipped through the crowd to his side. "Daniel," she said, reaching out to take his hand.

"Peggy." He clasped it firmly, grinning from ear to ear. "Are you still --" She raised a brow. "-- enjoying your time on the international scene?" he finished smoothly.

"Oh, quite. It's been working out well." She really needed to get him somewhere private and talk about the last ten years of SHIELD ... but not here, with any number of unfriendly ears and listening devices about. "And what are you doing here, if you don't mind my asking?"

"I'm a reporter."

Her smooth diplomatic facade fell completely away for a moment. "Are you joking?"

"No," Daniel said, grinning at the look on her face. "I'm with an international newsmagazine. _The Correspondent_? Don't know if you've heard of it?"

"I have, yes." It had come out of nowhere in the last few years to take its place on the world stage, and was particularly focused on investigating corruption in high places and critiquing the foreign policy of nations from the US to Russia and all points in between. It had made things rather more difficult for Peggy, but the magazine recruited a high caliber of reporter and she wasn’t surprised at all that Daniel had found a place there.

"Oh, hey!" Daniel said. He nodded to the ambassador and gave her hand a tug. Bemused and delighted, she went with him. "You'll never guess who else is here tonight. You gotta get past the guard dogs, though."

"The what?" But she went with him, as he brushed past security into the private area of the reception, flashing a press pass.

This was where the real action was. The visitors and hangers-on were all out in the main reception area; here there were small clusters of men (and it _was_ all men; Peggy got some looks) engaged in discreet conversation while sipping drinks. Peggy recognized most of them -- in fact, wasn't that the US President over there, chatting with the new PM? There was no time for a better look, because Daniel had swept her around the corner.

And there was Jack.

With Daniel, it had taken her a moment to recognize him, because he looked so different, so unexpected. With Jack it was the opposite. He hadn't changed a bit, and in his tuxedo, drink in hand, talking to someone she was fairly sure was from the House of Lords, he looked like ...

Like he'd found his place, in a way.

Jack turned and saw Daniel first. He scowled and took a step their way, leaving the conversation behind. "You know I can't be seen talking to you again, even if it's for old time's sake -- _Peggy?"_

His surprised grin was genuine, a lot more so than the diplomatic smile he’d worn with the politician a minute ago. She found herself smiling back. It _was_ good to see them. Both of them.

"It's a regular reunion, isn't it?" Daniel said, grinning.

"Yeah, but -- oh, _fine,"_ Jack said, and he hustled them behind a small potted tree, its draping dark-green foliage providing some cover. Peggy couldn't help thinking of an action in enemy-held territory. "One minute, and then you two gotta get out of here. You look good, Marge."

"So do you. Both of you." They did, she thought. It was clear that they were pursuing their own callings, as was she. "What are you doing here, Jack? Are you in politics?" She hadn't heard his name -- but then, she didn't follow everything.

"In a way," Jack said, and grinned. "Got snapped up by --" He took a quick look around, but no one was near enough to listen. "-- MI6 after the SSR fell apart."

"Wait, you're with _my_ foreign service?" Peggy said in disbelief.

"I know, funny world, ain't it? Listen, I really can't be seen with you two here. You want to meet for drinks later, there's a hole in the wall called the Copper Falcon where some of my boys hang out. It’s down by --”

"I know where it is," Daniel said, and Jack gave him a look.

“I’m going to regret this, aren’t I? Meet me there before last call." Jack gave them both a nod, and his eyes were sparkling as he slipped out and rejoined the party.

"He certainly seems to be in his element," Peggy said. "And you!" She gripped Daniel's arm. "A member of the fourth estate. I'm not surprised; it's all the same investigative skills without the -- what did you call it once?"

"The bureaucratic bullhockey," Daniel said, grinning. "Look, let's clear out of this section before they decide to throw us out. Grab some champagne, and I can get an exclusive with the director of SHIELD."

"You wish," Peggy said archly. "But I'd happily have a glass of champagne with an old friend."

"Me too," Daniel said, and he smiled. "Me too."


	13. Busman's holiday in Yellowstone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr prompt: _A suspicious happening at a famous tourist attraction (like Yellowstone maybe? The hot pools can cook and dissolve a person if they fall in). Peggy and her boys are on "vacation" nearby and get called in to investigate. Jack thinks it's nothing and wants to get back to love-nesting but oops turns out it's a serious thing._ [Originally posted here.](https://sholiofic.tumblr.com/post/189540021068/prompt-a-suspicious-happening-at-a-famous-tourist)

"I knew this was going to happen," Jack said. "I _knew_ it. The woman is incapable of going anywhere without discovering a crime. I'd suspect her of killing people herself, except I know exactly where she was last night."

"Jack!" Peggy shouted across the cracked volcanic soil around the geyser. "Come over here and help me measure distances!"

"Duty calls, Prince Charming," Daniel said, patting his arm. "I'd help but ... crutch."

"Oh, shut up," Jack said, and went to hold a surveyor's stake for Peggy's efforts at mapping out the (alleged) crime scene.


	14. OT3 having a fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr request, OT3, ["I can't forgive you if you won't talk to me"](https://sholiofic.tumblr.com/post/189636120628/prompt-for-agent-carter-ot3-if-you-are-still).

"This is completely ridiculous."

"You're telling me?" Daniel said, and it occurred to him that if Jack, of all people, was being the voice of reason around here, things had gone badly off the rails.

"I was _also_ referring to you."

Any goodwill he'd been harboring toward Jack collapsed. "Oh, come on, are you seriously taking Peggy's side in this?"

Jack stared at him. "No; it's just that I cannot believe that after ten years of me fighting with Peggy, and you fighting with me, I am actually having to mediate between the two of you. This is just wrong."

"I'm not seeing a whole lot of actual mediating going on here," Daniel muttered, not quite wanting to admit that Jack might kinda have a point.

"Oh, it's mediating you want? Fine." Jack threw the back door open. "Peggy!" he bellowed at the top of his lungs.

Peggy, who was only about fifteen feet away, looked up from aggressively pruning the rosebushes. "Nothing that is happening here is any of your business, Jack."

"Get in here and talk to Sousa before his moping gives me hives."

"There are a lot of rocks out here, Jack. Kindly don't make me throw one at you."

"Wouldn't be the first time," Jack muttered, and then announced, "Daniel, the door's open; go out there and talk to her."

"She's carrying pruning shears; are you serious?"

"You wanted mediation; I'm mediating!"

"You're being an ass!"

Peggy ducked her head and aggressively clipped another rose tip.

"See? She's smiling, that's a good sign, get out there now, shoo."

"You're going to get me killed -- ow -- Jack, let go --"

He was unceremoniously shoved onto the back porch. The door slammed behind him. There was the sound of the lock snicking shut.

"That's it, he's trying to get me killed. Jack!" Daniel shouted. "Let me in!"

"You really should have paid more attention to my lock picking lessons," Peggy murmured, and she looked up at him, the hair falling into one eye.

She was so goddamn beautiful when she was pissed at him. Which was really kind of a problem, come to think of it.

"You could come over here and show me," Daniel said cautiously. "I, uh ... I think Jack kind of deserves it, don't you?"

Peggy stood there for a long moment looking at him, then flipped the hair out of her face. "You know," she said, "you're right." And she took a small canvas-wrapped bundle out of the pocket of her dungarees, because of course she carried lock picks while _trimming the rosebushes,_ and came over to the back door and crouched down. "It's a simple matter of feeling for the pins. Here, give me your hands."

He used the support of the crutch to go down carefully on his good knee. Peggy closed her hands over his, showing him how to feel out the internal workings of the lock. Her cheek was mere inches from his, both of them leaning forward and working on the lock, as he murmured, "I'm sorry. I was an ass."

More silence, as she worked at the lock; then she said quietly, "So was I."

The lock's pins aligned with a click, and the door sprang a few inches open. Peggy gave Daniel a bright, triumphant grin.

"Well," she said, struggling to her feet and holding a hand down for him, "shall we go give Jack our opinion on his mediation methods?"

"Love to," Daniel said, and accepted her hand up.


	15. Vietnam AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr prompt: [Agent Carter Vietnam AU](https://sholiofic.tumblr.com/post/189699111728/prompt-agent-carter-vietnam-war-au)

"Your boyfriend wasn't the only soldier who went MIA in the war, Carter."

Peggy tilted her head back, clasped her hands neatly over the files in her arms, and gave him a level look. "Then I expect you'd want to bring him and all the rest of them home as much as I do. Please get out of my way, _Senator's aide_ Thompson, and let me have a word with Senator Masters."

She was not entirely unsurprised when he didn't get out of the way. A power move, she thought, and tensed, ready to put him on the floor if he made a move.

Instead, he leaned in. "You think you can stand toe-to-toe with men who served this country, Carter? You think you can stand here in a nice office and make judgments on the things we did over there?"

"I think," she said quietly, "that I have a meeting with the senator, and you are in my way."

"None of us had a choice," he said between his teeth. "You don't know what it was like over there."

 _A choice? Didn't you?_ she could have said. She'd seen many young men like him, who'd leaned on family connections to slip through the draft board's fingers. That Thompson had actually served, seen combat even, spoke to her of a particular kind of ... something: patriotism, duty, even fanaticism. The vicious, defensive anger in his eyes didn't surprise her; she'd seen it before. It was people like Steve who had truly had no choice.

But what she said instead was, "Do you think I wasn't there?"

He laughed sharply. "Didn't see a whole lot of women."

"Then you weren't looking. I was with the State Department in those days, Thompson. Please do get out of my way."

He did, perhaps only because he didn't want a scene. As she went past him, he said harshly to her back, "At least you had a choice about it, though, didn't you?"

"Didn't _you?"_ she asked over her shoulder, and went into Masters' office.


	16. Jack taking care of sick Peggy & Daniel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr prompt: _Peggy/Jack/Daniel - Peggy and Daniel get sick (badly enough not to be able to work but not as bad as to have to go to the hospital), so Jack has to suddenly become a caretaker/nurse for them._ [Originally posted here.](https://sholiofic.tumblr.com/post/189540403323/peggyjackdaniel-peggy-and-daniel-get-sick)

Peggy came down with it first, a flu that had been going around the SSR, knocking down men like bowling pins. She struggled through most of a day at work before Jack got completely exasperated and sent her home.

Unsurprisingly, Daniel came down with it the next day. 

Jack gave up and called in sick too. If he wasn't sick yet, he probably would be soon. The nation would just have to protect itself for the next couple of days.

Somewhat surprisingly, he _didn't_ feel ill, at least not so far, which left him bringing hot tea and soup and warm compresses to a pair of miserable, feverish invalids.

"You're weirdly good at this," Daniel said hoarsely, squinting at Jack over a cup of tea as if he suspected some sort of ulterior motive. Peggy napped in a sweaty heap of bedcovers beside him.

"I'm a man of many talents," Jack said loftily, and went off hastily at the smell of burning soup in the kitchen. (Soup from a can. He _did_ have limits.)

But what surprised him was that he didn't mind. He couldn't help wondering what his only-slightly-younger self would have thought of him now, scrubbing out a slightly burnt soup pan in the kitchen sink with his shirt sleeves rolled up. He hadn't shaved or even combed his hair today. He'd taken the phone off its hook so it wouldn't wake up anyone in what he was coming to think of as the sickroom.

He slipped quietly into the bedroom a few minutes later and found them both asleep, draped on each other. This would be a perfect opportunity to get some paperwork done ... but instead, he carefully tugged back the covers on one side of the bed and slipped in beside Daniel, put an arm over Daniel's waist and carefully fit himself into their sleeping tangle.

Work would still be there later. And sure, he was probably going to get a nice case of flu for his troubles. But right now, there was nowhere else he'd rather be.


	17. Early SSR days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr prompt: _Jack/Daniel/Peggy or jack & Daniel &Peggy either for the final dissolution of the SSR and moving to SHIELD or it could be dealing (or more likely Not Dealing) with the stress of the SSR and brass and such._ [Originally posted here.](https://sholiofic.tumblr.com/post/189655886573/so-if-you-would-still-like-prompts-cause-i)

It had been a long time since she'd really had to make do, the way they had during the war, when there were constant shortages of even basic office supplies. At the SSR post-war, it had been difficult and stressful in its own way, but at least there had been adequate supplies of typewriter ribbon and paper.

And now here they were in a basement office in DC, with fire-sale furniture, mismatched chipped cups on the beat-up old metal desk that held the coffee things, and never-ending shortages and equipment breakdowns. It wasn't precisely a lack of funds, because if she wanted something specific, Howard would happily provide it -- once she managed to find him, and ask him, and then make sure he knew _exactly_ what she wanted (which was how they'd ended up with a brand-new, full-size typesetting machine for a printing press, instead of the typewriters she needed). Howard's connection to the practical considerations of everyday life for most people was tenuous at best.

But ... they were _here._ It was real. And maybe they just had three floors of an old office building that was otherwise half given over to an insurance firm, in which they had to hold prisoners in a hastily reinforced closet because they didn't have cells; maybe they had to work evenings and weekends, struggling to learn how to be their own support staff when they'd always had people to do it for them before.

But it was theirs. It was hers. And Peggy was never going back to letting anyone else be her boss ever again.


	18. Violet at the fundraiser in 2x06

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr prompt: [instead of Dottie going to the fundraiser in 2x06, it's Violet and Edwin.](https://sholiofic.tumblr.com/post/189851912933/i-dont-know-if-youre-still-taking-prompts-but)

"Wow," Violet murmured, looking around wide-eyed at the ballroom and the many beautifully dressed dancers swirling around on the floor. "I've only seen places like this in movies. Have you ever been to anything like this before?"

"Regrettably so," Jarvis murmured back. His hand was light on her arm.

"Oh ... right. You must go to a lot of this sort of thing with Mr. Stark, don't you?"

Jarvis made a generally noncommittal sound and didn't answer properly.

Violet was still dizzied by all of this. Dizzy and angry -- when Daniel had called her, she couldn't believe he was asking a favor of her after _all of that._ "Do you seriously not know any other women?" she'd said.

But she had agreed, because in the months she'd been dating him, she had always yearned to get involved with an SSR case. She understood that they weren't all fun and games, but it just seemed so dashing and exciting. And so far, this was entirely living up to expectations. Mr. Jarvis's wife had helped her dress in an incredibly gorgeous gown that she knew she couldn't have afforded with three months' salary. She just hoped she managed not to spill anything on it.

"You have the device?" Jarvis said for the third or fourth time in the last few minutes.

"Yes, I still have it." She patted her clutch purse with one gloved hand. "You'll have to point her out to me. I've seen her movies, but I don't know if I'd recognize Miss Frost in person." Miss Frost! Whitney Frost! She was going to get close to an actual famous actress. Despite living in Hollywood-land, the closest she'd been to celebrity greatness was seeing Bob Hope on a USO tour while she was nursing in the war. And now she was going to meet the actual Whitney Frost!

... well, okay, jab her with a spiked tube and collect some of her blood, for reasons that neither Daniel nor Miss Carter had been particularly successful at explaining. She had gathered that Miss Frost was perhaps some sort of Communist spy, which seemed to check out; all kinds of people were turning out to be, these days, and of course those were the people Daniel was supposed to stop.

Daniel. Daniel and Miss Carter, out there in a van, together ... but Violet firmly shoved her thoughts away from that. She was surrounded by the wealthy and powerful (goodness, was that Senator Caldwell over there?!) and she was determined to enjoy herself, even if this evening was eventually going to involve jabbing a very famous actress with a tube full of spikes.


End file.
